I discovered this for myself, in a minor way, in 1953
when I was chosen to represent the Girl Guides of Exeter at the Coronation
of Queen Elizabeth II. In my case, the requirement was that my shoes should
shine as never before, my Girl Guide badge should gleam as never before,
and I should look smarter than ever before. Athletes chosen for the 1984
Olympics also discovered the truth that selection and responsibility go together.
As one put it, 'We have lived for the Games and made personal sacrifices
for them.'

Christians are chosen people. 'You did not choose
me, but I chose you', (John 15:16). 'You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people belonging to God' (1 Peter 2:9). 'We know that he
has chosen you' (1 Thessalonians 1:4). Christians therefore carry huge
responsibilities: 'I chose you to go and bear fruit  fruit that will
last' (John 15:16). 'You are a chosen people ... that you may declare the
praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light' (1
Peter 2:9). We are chosen for obedience: 'Why do you call me, "Lord, Lord,"
and do not what I say?' (Luke 6:46). 'Not everyone who says to me, "Lord,
Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of
my Father who is in heaven' (Matthew 7:21). Clearly, the Christian is one
of whom sacrifice and one-hundred-per-cent loyalty is expected.

All this presents few problems and a whole galaxy
of joys until our will clashes with God's will. Then there are
tears

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and tantrums, rebellion and the flat refusal to believe that God
not only knows what is best for us but actually has our best interests at
heart.

Anna knew this when she came to see me. Even so, as
she fought back the tears, she pleaded with me to find a loophole in
2 Corinthians 6:14, which says: 'Do not be mismated with unbelievers'
(RSV). 'Isn't there any way that Robin and I can get married, Joyce?
I love him so much. I really don't want to give him up.' Anna knew what I
would say before she came to see me. Even so, when she realized she was fighting
a losing battle, she became bitter: 'It's as bad as belonging to a sect or
something  not being able to make your own decisions, not being able
to please yourself?'

But is it like that? Are God's constraints unreasonable;
or do they perhaps make sound sense after all? Does the embargo on mixed
marriages extend to the 'going out' phase? In other words, should a Christian
'go out' with a non-Christian? If not, why not? These are the questions we
must now grasp firmly by the hand and seek, not simply to answer, but to
understand.

Why the embargo on 'mixed marriages'?

First, we must explore what the Bible has to say about the problem
of mixed marriages, not racially, but spiritually mixed. To do this, three
key passages need to be examined.

First, there is the shrewd question asked by Amos:
'Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?' In other words:
Do two form a close relationship unless they bring the same set of expectations
to their developing friendship? This question, like the others which follow
in Amos 3:3ff.: 'Does a lion roar in the thicket when he has no prey? Does
he growl in his den when he has caught nothing?' (verse 4), for example,
assumes the answer: 'No way'.

Some Bible teachers suggest that this verse applies,
not only to friendships and business relationships, but to the marriage
relationship also. Whether it does or does not is not clear from the text.
What is clear is that two people entertaining marriage will, if they are
wise, ensure that their goals in life are compatible. What is also clear
is that marriage

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counsellors today are underlining the imbalance which is created
in a marriage relationship when two people marry from different faiths or
where a person with a strong faith marries a person for whom faith in God
finds no niche in their life. They describe these relationships as
high-risk.

Paul's teaching

The passage most Christians turn to when they weigh whether marriage
or 'going-out' with an unbeliever is permissible or not is 2 Corinthians
6:14-17 where Paul has this to say:

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness
and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have
in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple
of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
"I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and
they will be my people."

"Therefore come out from them and be separate, says
the Lord."

Many Bible commentators are convinced that 'The subject matter
here is marriage with unbelievers.... The apostle strongly exhorts Christians
not to mix with unbelievers in the sense of sharing in their lives. Marriage
is, of course, the supreme way of sharing in the life of
another.'1

The translators contributing to the New English Bible
seem so convinced that the relationship in Paul's mind is marriage that they
translate verse 14 in this stark way: 'Do not unite yourselves with unbelievers;
they are not fit mates for you.' If this translation is accurate, you cannot
have it spelled out more clearly than that.

Jesus' teaching

As we observed in chapter two, isolated verses must
always

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be interpreted in the light of the Bible's wider teaching. For
example what did Jesus have to say about mixed marriages? Jesus does not
refer to such relationships specifically. What he does do is take us back
to first principles: 'A man will leave his father and mother and be united
to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' (Matthew 19:5; cf.
Genesis 2:24). The oneness of which Jesus speaks here includes genital fusion
but its meaning is much broader and deeper than the mere joining of two bodies.
Jesus here refers to the emotional oneness, the creative oneness, and the
spiritual oneness, such as Adam and Eve so clearly enjoyed in the
Garden of Eden, where together they communed with God in the cool of the
day.

Marriage, as Jesus would have it, envisages a foundation
of spiritual oneness: a spiritual harmony.

A strait-jacket?

Why? Why does God make this bold, irreversible statement: 'Do not
be mismated with unbelievers'? Why does he say unbelievers are not fit mates
for Christians? From the many reasons put forward, I propose to dwell on
two: one negative, one positive. First, the negative.

The young people in the Youth Group I used to lead
pestered me with this question on one occasion. Like Anna, they were up in
arms because God's Word did not happen to fit in with their whims. 'Why?'
they would ask. 'Why is God so unreasonable, so mean? Why is Christianity
so restrictive?'

It so happened that among the members of the Young
Wives Group were many who had become Christians after they married, who therefore
found themselves in the mixed marriage situation Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians
7:12ff. I decided, therefore, to ask them why they thought God had placed
us in this seeming strait-jacket.

Although fifteen years have flashed by since these
conversations took place, I still have the notes I made in front of me, and
I still recall the look of utter bewilderment which crept over each face
as we talked. One woman gave voice to the perplexity they all felt: 'But
why should a Christian want to marry a non-Christian? There are so
many disadvantages,

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so many heartaches, so many problems.'

They went on to pin-point some of the
problems.

'Take Sundays, for example. We're all getting ready
for church  the children and me, that is. Bill makes it clear he's
not coming. Well! You know how children are. They start asking these embarrassing
questions! "Mum! Why isn't dad coming to church? Isn't he a Christian like
us?" I really love Bill. I know these things hurt him and I hate seeing him
hurt. I try to point out to the children that their father is a good
man. But it's difficult.'

Another voice added, 'Yes. And there's every meal
time. We sit there with the meal on the table. When it's just me and the
children we say grace. When their father's there, we all look embarrassed.
"Shall we? Shan't we?" I want ours to be a Christian home especially
for the children's sake, but how can it be while the head of the home is
an unbeliever?'

'My problem is that my husband feels threatened by
my faith. Oh!I don't mean he stops me praying or reading the Bible, or even
going to Young Wives or church once on Sunday. But he doesn't want me getting
involved. He actually says that. "Don't you get involved." But I want
to be involved in the Lord's work.'

'The thing that bothers me is not being able to use
my home for God. We've got a lovely home. It could easily be used for the
Lord. But Tom won't think of it. It's his castle. He comes in, raises the
drawbridge and won't think of sharing it  especially with the
church.'

I knew each of these husbands well. They were all
pleasant, accommodating, generous people, in many ways the salt of the earth.
None of them set out to make life difficult for their wives. The problem
was not so much of their making as the nature of the inevitable imbalance
a mixed marriage brings. The leaning-tower-of-Pisa syndrome cannot be righted
unless the unbelieving partner becomes a Christian or the Christian abandons
his or her faith.

This is so obvious, but a stab of pain went right
through me when a likable non-Christian husband spelled this out in my presence
recently. He and his Christian wife had been sitting in my lounge bickering
for well over an hour. The wife

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poured out her bitterness at the way her husband failed her constantly.
I listened while she hammered him with hurtful home-truths. As we drew the
counselling session to a conclusion, this bewildered man made the shrewd
comment which cut me to the quick: 'What my wife needs is a Christian
husband.' He could not have been more accurate. His wife had married him
in a rebellious anti-God phase. Since, she had returned to her first love
for God but her husband could not match her cherished expectations of what
a Christian husband should be because he lacked the essential qualification:
a shared faith. Their marriage ended in divorce.

Love for the Lord cements in marriages

But there is a positive reason for marrying a Christian who is
going the same way with Christ as you are: love for the Lord cements the
marriage in a way nothing else can. Indeed, the Lord's love is the frame
in which your two loves fit together and which, in fact, hold them together.
Look at it this way..... If two people walking in a botanic garden are attracted
by the same rare flower, they both move towards that flower to examine it.
In moving nearer to the flower, they move ever nearer to one another. Similarly,
in marriage, if two people are growing ever nearer and ever more like the
Lord they love, then imperceptibly they will each be drawing nearer to the
other. It cannot be avoided.

This love for the Lord which is central to them both
binds them together. It is at the core of their marriage and influences
everything they do and are. In such a marriage both work towards the same
goal: to serve Christ, to put him first in everything, to conduct their lives
within the divine framework. Thus their lives become integrated and this
creates harmony in the home.

Going out with a non-Christian

'But I'm not talking about marriage. I don't want to marry
Mike. I just want to go out with him. Surely there's nothing wrong with that?
And perhaps he'll become a Christian through me?'

It's quite true. The non-Christian might become
a Christian

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through the witness of the believing partner. A few have done so.
If the statistics are to be believed, though, this happens only very rarely.
What normally happens is that the Christian grows cold and abdicates all
his or her responsibilities as a citizen of the kingdom of
heaven.

I have personally seen this happen too many times
to remain apathetic or unconcerned when someone like Anna, whom I mentioned
earlier, comes to see me. I am deeply concerned for Christians who take such
dangerous risks.

It still hurts to reflect on the unfolding story of
a young friend of mine who gave his life to Christ while studying in this
country and who subsequently returned home to resume the friendship he once
enjoyed with a non-Christian girl. 'I know what the Bible says about not
marrying an unbeliever. I just like her, that's all.'

But he did marry her. When I visited them in
their own home, I asked him what marriage had done to his faith. A shadow
seemed to pass over his face and his eyes grew sad as he admitted: 'I haven't
been to church once since my wedding. I never read my Bible these days and
scarcely ever pray.'

I looked out of the window and watched his small children
playing in the garden. 'And the children?'

'They know nothing whatsoever about the
Lord.'

'How do you feel  deep down inside, I
mean?'

In reply to that question this young man admitted
to the inner sadness, the yawning emptiness which no-one and nothing could
fill. 'My faith really mattered to me. Jesus really mattered to
me.'

Lop-sided values, beliefs, behaviour patterns

But I have not forgotten that the questioner whom I quoted at the
beginning of this section insisted that she was not intending to marry Mike.
Doesn't that make a difference? Doesn't the toll-gate open if this is not
a one-way trip?

friends is that they share the same values, or as C.S. Lewis puts
it, they see the same truth. The typical expression of such friendship would
be something like, ' "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." '2
Love in this context means that two or more people care about the same
realities.

One of the biggest problems with the
Christian/non-Christian pairing-off problem is that these two people do not
share the same truth: the same value systems, the same guiding principles
for life or the same beliefs.

You may retort: 'Does this really matter?' Surely
a golf enthusiast can marry a squash player and their relationship need not
be damaged; it can be enhanced if one learns to play or watch golf and the
other to play or watch squash.

Unfortunately, this is not a neat or accurate parallel.
If being a Christian means anything, it means giving God the first place
in your life; revolving your life around him. If you go out with an unbeliever,
however good and close and enriching the friendship is, an essential element
must be missing: the spiritual. As someone summed it up for me the other
day: 'being hitched to a non-Christian as I am, I simply cannot be the kind
of Christian I want to be.'

It is not simply that a strand is missing; the heart
of the relationship is missing. Two Christians can enrich one another's spiritual
lives by reading the Bible together, praying together, going to church together,
attending meetings together, working for God together. A man looks at spiritual
truths differently from a woman. Put together the male and female viewpoints
and you have a rich whole. The relationship becomes not like a flabby lettuce
which has no heart, but one which is firm at the centre, healthy, satisfying,
growing.

The moral dilemma

But the problem does not centre around absent ingredients. It often
introduces a strain on the couple concerned because of what is present: opposite
and opposing hopes of the relationship.

Take the genital problems we discussed in chapters
two, five and six for example. A Christian, as we have seen, is one who has
sworn allegiance to Jesus Christ, one who has

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enlisted in Jesus' service, who has promised life-long obedience.
The unbeliever has made no such choice so neither expects the benefits of
becoming a Christian nor expects to pay the price of being a
Christian.

On the one hand, then, you have a Christian partner
who knows that if they are to live biblically they will draw the line this
side of pre-marital sex. On the other hand, you have the unbeliever who
acknowledges no such restraints; like most unbelievers they might well believe
the exact opposite.

I say this, not because I believe all unbelievers
are rebellious, therefore promiscuous, but because, if I read the signs of
the times correctly, an increasing number of teenagers grow up today believing
that pre-marital sex is the norm. I think, for example, of a programme
transmitted on television in June 1984 which showed that, since the sex
revolution of the 1960s, most teenagers would expect to have sexual intercourse
before marriage. Or I think of a report published in May 1984 that claimed
that teenage boys in Britain today take as their model James Bond and, in
true 007 fashion, try to 'make it' with as many girls as possible; that many
girls feel pressurized to prove their femininity by forfeiting their virginity.
Girls even feel convinced that to please a man they must permit him to have
sex with them; that this behaviour is natural and normal.

This is the current climate in which the Christian
co-exists with the non-Christian. We have already observed the peergroup
pressure to conform. We have already observed that, for most of us, it is
a struggle to abstain from pre-marital genital intercourse with someone who
attracts us physically. These pressures are accentuated when someone who
takes James Bond as their model mismates with a person who takes Jesus Christ
as their model. An unbeliever put the situation so clearly when he
apologized to his girlfriend for forcing intercourse on her: 'I didn't intend
to hurt or insult you. I thought all girls wanted it. Why didn't you tell
me Christians behave differently? I never knew!'3

How can the non-Christian know? The Bible's teaching
about extra-marital genital involvement is not taught today. In schools and
colleges it has been replaced by more liberal

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views. In most churches it finds no place in the teaching curriculum.
While the church remains silent, almost every pop song churns out the same
persuasive, sensuous message: so long as you love one another there's no
need to wait. While the church remains silent, films and plays and books
and magazines propagate the same message: so long as you love one another,
any form of genital intimacy is legitimate. While the church remains silent,
students and nurses at the beginning of their training are advised by their
tutors to go on the pill and contraceptive machines are installed in the
toilets in many universities and colleges.

The Christian going out with the non-Christian not
only suffers a kind of vitamin deficiency in their relationship: lack of
shared prayer, shared goals, shared beliefs, mutually agreed boundaries,
but in the absence of this life-giving ingredient, they are expected to summon
the superlative strength required to swim against today's sexual tide. This
challenge defeats some Christian couples who are both wanting to serve
and please Christ. Not many of us are strong enough to combat such powerful,
anti-God influences on our own. That is why many Christian/non-Christian
relationships result in the gradual fading of the Christian's other love-life:
their love for the Lord. Unable to extricate themselves from the compromise
such relationships almost always present, they slink away from God, fall
to attacking the church or the pastor or other Christians and are eventually
lost to the fellowship.

God wants to protect us from this self-inflicted anguish,
the kind of inner tug-of-war Anna was expressing when she asked the heart-rending
question: 'Isn't there any way I can marry Robin? I love him so
much.'

And God's concern rests equally with the unbelieving
partner. He wants to woo them to himself. We hinder his task when, by obedience,
we say one thing with our lips and give a totally different message with
our lives. As one girl lamented recently, 'How will my ex-boyfriend ever
understand what God's love is now? How could I have been such a lousy
witness?'

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The gulf

I have homed in on the sexual because, for many Christians, the
heart of the problem seems to lie here. But the problem is deeper, more complex
than that. When a person turns to Christ, he accepts a whole new value system:
the topsy-turvy standards of the kingdom of God. This affects his attitudes,
his time, his talents, what he watches and listens to, where he goes, his
ambitions  every particle of his being because he knows that he is
under new ownership: he has been bought with an unrepeatable price. He is
no longer lord of his life. Jesus is.

To the unbeliever, such a change of lordships makes
not one iota of sense. It is utter foolishness. For him, there is no apparent
reason why his world should not revolve around number one, seeking pleasure,
the fleeting excitements of the moment. He does not live in anticipation
of the Lord's return. This is not a criticism. It is a fact.

Between the Bible-observing Christian and the unbeliever,
then, lies an inevitable, and in some senses an unbridgeable, gulf; a behaviour
gap. That is why Paul is adamant that the two should not try to entwine their
lives. The incompatibility problem is as acute as trying to introduce darkness
into a room which is floodlit.

The 'wet Christian' problem

'But all the Christians I know are so wet. I don't fancy any of
them.'

It has become fashionable in certain Christian circles for
girls, in particular, to voice this complaint. These girls are almost always
attractive, vivacious, marriageable, longing to be married and those with
strong views about the kind of men who would make suitable partners for
them.

The complaint is born of pain, pride and very often
selfishness. The pain stems from the anguish that they have not yet found
that much-sought-after but elusive phenomenon, a life partner. The pride
stems from the fact that their 'husband-wanted' short-list is dictated by
worldly, not Christian, criteria: good looks, good job, good prospects, good
income, easy disposition. Too often they look at a Christian guy and complain:
'he's not tall enough for one thing, he's not

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very good looking and he's not at all sporty. I'd be embarrassed
to walk down the street with him let alone turn up at church with him.' And
the selfishness? I suspect that if more of these girls concentrated on fulfilling
the Lord's command to love one another as he loves us, the 'wet Christian'
problem would quickly become a thing of the past. Christian people sometimes
appear 'wet' because no-one has come alongside them in the crucial formative
years and loved out their full potential. They therefore withdraw into
themselves, panic in the presence of the opposite sex, and fail to express
their creativity or to grow in maturity. Criticism, complaint and condemnation
help no-one. The solution to the problem is not for Christian girls to hide
behind their hands and gossip about these dreadful Christian men, at the
same time looking elsewhere for close relationships across the sex barrier.
That, according to Paul's teaching, is disobedience. No. The solution is
more radical than that. Jesus put it this way: 'Love one another as I have
loved you.' That means, within the ranks of the fellowship, recognize one
another's worth, draw out one another's strengths, tease out one another's
full potential so that we appear to the world and to each other, not wet
but gloriously alive; a walking testimony to the creativity of
God.

What to say to your friends

It will be obvious from what I have already written that, in my
view, when a Christian goes out with a non-Christian his is an act of
disobedience.

To the question, 'Surely Christians should go
out with non-Christians to convert them: how else will they hear about Jesus?'
I would simply ask: 'Since when has effective evangelism been born from willful
disobedience?' The Bible clearly says, 'Do not be mismated with unbelievers'.
True evangelism is not just telling people about Jesus but
leading people into a personal relationship with Jesus. A relationship
with Jesus involves us in a life of obedience: ' "Why do you call me, 'Lord,
Lord,' and do not do what I say?" ' (Luke 6:46). Clearly then these lop-sided
relationships cannot be designed by God as tools for evangelism.

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Having taken that hard line, I would now put in a
plea for a generosity of spirit amongst Christians. It very often happens
that if a Christian so much as smiles at a non-Christian of the opposite
sex at a party, that Christian is ostracized by the entire fellowship: shunned
as though they carried some deadly disease. The Christian might start going
out with a non-Christian and pluck up courage to bring their friend to church
or even a Bible study. But the embarrassment and unspoken disapproval exude
a lack of welcome and it is not long before the couple cease to darken Christian
doors. As one of our parishioners once told me, 'I know I shouldn't have
gone out with Jim when he wasn't a Christian. And I know it was disobedient
to marry him. But when I did come back to the Lord, people's hard attitude
made it really hard for me to return to church again.'

Chua Wee Hian, in his book, Lovers for Life,
tells the story of a mixed marriage which once took place in Malaysia. Just
before the wedding, an 'order' was passed around the church refusing Christians
permission to attend. As a result, most of the tables at the wedding banquet
were empty, food was wasted, the couple's confidence in their so-called friends
was shattered.

Chua Wee Hian concludes, and I agree with him, 'Our
concern ... will be better expressed in other
ways.'4

How? The most effective way to bring about any change
and to dislodge any disobedience is prayer. Instead of spending valuable
time gossiping about the person's backsliding, covenant to pray for them,
on your own or with another person who expresses equal concern. Let this
prayer spring, not from a judgmental or critical spirit (finger-pointing
and compassionate prayer cannot co-exist), but let it be an expression of
the love and compassion you feel for the person.

Don't nag. Don't condemn. Reflect on areas in your
own life God is wanting to deal with. Keep the whole problem in perspective.
And be interested in the friendship. It very often happens that a Christian
going out with a non-Christian is so cold-shouldered by the Christian friends
whose shock is communicated in one way or another that they have to turn
to non-Christian friends to share the euphoria and the pain

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of the friendship. That is not just a pity but a tragedy. It is
a tragedy because, even when we are being willfully disobedient, most of
us want to find the steep pathway which leads us back to a joy-filled
relationship with God. Most of us are not strong enough or wise enough to
find the way alone. Most of us need at least one Christian friend who will
stand by us, love us through our waywardness, understand our rebellion, pray
and support to the bitter end, until we have said our 'No' to temptation
and our 'Yes' to God. And such costly friendship is what you and I are called
to give. Even if the Christian decides to choose a mixed marriage, our
responsibility under God is to offer support and ongoing care, not to cast
the first stone.

I am not saying that we shouldn't ask concerned questions.
'What's so good about the relationship?' 'How do you feel about the absence
of spiritual compatibility?' I am saying, let any such questions be
conceived in the womb of love, let them be prompted by the Holy Spirit. Never
quiz a person from malice, the desire to make them look small, or with the
aim of cornering them so that they have no option but to fight.

What do I do next?

And if you are reading this chapter because you yourself have formed
a close one-to-one relationship with an unbeliever, what must you do? If
you are under eighteen and the chances of this relationship resulting in
marriage are slight, weigh carefully what I have said in this chapter about
mismating, weigh carefully the thesis of this book: that close one-to-one
relationships have as their main purpose, the growth of the whole person:
emotional, spiritual, sexual. Be honest. Is this relationship helping your
spiritual growth or hindering it? If it is hindering your relationship with
God, meditate on Hebrews 12:1, 'So then let us rid ourselves of everything
that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and
let us run with determination the race that lies before us. Let us keep our
eyes fixed on Jesus... ' (GNB). Act appropriately.

If you are over eighteen it is possible that this
relationship could result in marriage. It could be that marriage is in
your

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partner's mind even though you may not yet seriously entertain
the idea. Is it responsible Christian loving to develop a close relationship
with someone you know, under God, you cannot marry? Is it responsible to
allow the friendship to deepen only to pull out at the eleventh hour, with
all the hurt and turmoil that entails? Is it even responsible to dilly-dally,
stringing someone along in the hope that they might become a Christian? Surely
not. That is not loving another, it is loving yourself.

My writing of this chapter was interrupted by an all-day
Ladies Conference where I addressed two hundred women on the subject of Christian
marriage. A question-box collected questions that were to be dealt with towards
the close of the conference. The first question I found in that box asked:
'How can you make a Christian marriage if your husband is not a
Christian?'

The short answer to that is, 'You can't'. Neither
can you create the radical relationship I am describing in this book unless
your partner is going the same way as you are  with Christ.

Is there any alternative at the going out stage, then,
to the dreaded one: splitting up? I think not. To that painful alternative,
we address ourselves in the next chapter.